More Patients Turning to Crowdfunding to Pay Off High Medical Bills

The increasingly high cost of medical bills has more and more people turning to an unlikely solution: crowdfunding. According to Business Insider, a growing number of patients—some elderly, some with chronic illnesses—who are finding medical expenses like prescription drug costs to be too much of a burden to pay off, are turning to crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe for a solution.

A simple “prescription” search on GoFundMe turned up over 13,500 pages, and specifically, “insulin”-related searches turned up 6,000 results (over the last 10 years, per BI, the price of insulin has increased by 300 percent).

An article from the Journal of the American Medical Association cited in the story stated that “The rise of medical crowdfunding carries the promise of more efficiently matching potential donors with unmet needs in ways that may increase overall giving, mirroring emerging technologies in other industries such as ride-hailing and retail services that aim to more efficiently match supply and demand.”

Below, watch an ABC News report on the successes—and pitfalls—of using Internet crowdfunding to pay off medical bills.